BILLIONAIRE LIFESTYLES

One more craziness about the frozen Iowa caucus today.  Republican candidates have spent $123 million in advertising so far.  With such low temperatures throughout the state tonight, it would not be surprising if only 123,000 show up to vote.  $1,000/vote????  In the 2020 presidential election, $14.4 billion was spent to gain 155.4 million votes.  That calculates to around $10/vote.  Does this make any sense?  Incidentally, the first official primary election state for Democrats is South Carolina, although only Joe Biden will get votes.  Bet you did not know that President Grover Cleveland is on the newest $1000 bill, which has been discontinued.  The appraised value if you have one is $5000.

We're better off in the USA than anywhere else.  I say this on the basis of the following from Wikipedia ranking household expenditure per capita/year:

• #1      United States          $43,931
• #2      Hong Kong             $37,893
• #3      Luxembourg           $33,647
• #4      Bermuda                 $32,146
• #5      Switzerland             $31,314
• #6      Singapore               $29,790
• #7      Norway                   $27,843
• #10    Germany                 $25,834
• #25    Bahrain                   $21,702
• #40    Romania                 $18,657
• #51    Malaysia                 $16,378
• #70    Belarus                   $11,118
• #90    Ukraine                   $  7,852
• #98    China                      $  6,963
• #100  Iran                         $  6,612
• #121  India                       $  4,636
• #150  Tanzania                 $1  ,759
• #168  Congo                     $    755

Then there are billionaires, 2,668 of them worth a total of $12.2 trillion.

• #1      Bernard Arnault of France, who runs VMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, and has a net worth of $182 billion.  To the right in his prime. Now, below that.
• #2      Elon Musk of South African, now the USA.

• 
  #3 Jeff Bezos, #4 Larry Ellison, #5 Warren Buffet, #6 Bill Gates, #7 Michael Bloomberg, all from the U.S.
• The USA has the most:  735.
• China us #2 with 562.
• India is #3 with 169.

There was once an American television series, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous from 1984 to 1995, hosted by Robin Leach, a most appropriate name for this task.  They were all wealthy and lived extravagant lives, and Leach always ended each episode with champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

Insider Monkey, however, created a list of those billionaires who have modest lifestyles.  For example, the top five are:

• #1  Warren Buffet, who still lives in the Omaha, Nebraska home he bought in 1958 for $31,500.
• #2  Bill Gates, said to subsist modestly.

• 
  #3  MacKenzie Scott, who helped her former husband, Jeff Bezos, start Amazon in 1994.  She signed on with The Giving Pledge, founded by Buffett and Gates.

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  #4  Melinda French Gates, was once married to Bill, is said to live a simple life and helped start The Giving Pledge, which now has 241 signatories from 29 countries, pledging $600 billion....yes, billion.
• #5  Edythe Broad and her husband Eli, got rich through art, live in Los Angeles, and just gives money away, while living like other reasonably wealthy couples.

Link in features 10 billionaires who also live unlike billionaires.

Here are ten billionaires who are into outer space, literally.  They include Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson.  Elon Musk has not yet become a space traveller, but is in a list planning to conquer outer space.

• Musk's SpaceX plans to colonize Mars.  
• Has been planning this for more than two decades.
• Has been called a pure delusion by George Dvorsky and a dangerous delusion by Lord Martin Rees.
• Jeff Bezos has a space travel company, Blue Origin.  He also wants to go to Mars.
• Richard Branson has Virgin Galactic, also into space travel.
• Robert Bigelow decided at the age of 12 to be a space traveler, and founded Bigelow Aerospace. to create habitats in space.
• Paul Allen of Microsoft has passed away, but was notable in the space adventure field.
• James Cameron, the film director, was with Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt responsible for Planetary Resources to mine asteroids for precious metals.
• Naveen Jain has Moon Express to undertake deep space missions, with the Moon first.
• 
  Mark Zuckerberg, with Stephen Hawking (who has passed away) and Yuri Milner, created The Starshot Project to send small robots to places like Alpha Centauri.  While a typical rocket trip today would take 30,000 years for that, they have a way, they say, to do this at one-tenth the speed of light, to get there in 20 years.

And speaking of Zuckerberg, he has a $100 million, 1400-acre, Top Secret Hawaii Compound located on the island of Kauai.  Know the area well, for I once lived close by.  

In 1963, we moved to Kauai from the Big Island with our dog Pepper. To quote from my posting of 8March2021:

When we first drove from Lihue to Kilauea, we stopped by the Kaloko Reservoir.  Pepper, who had never swum before, jumped into the water and went to the middle, then came back.  That was a frightening experience.

Here is a photo I took that day.

This map does not show much, but includes Ka Loko Reservoir, which in 2006 failed and killed seven people.  The area is Anahola.

There is a wonderful beach, and in 1963 we were able to find a large number of Japanese glass fishing floats.  I suspect that road to Anahola Beach is now closed because of the Zuckerbergs.

Anyone familiar with this blog knows that I love Japanese wagyu beef, where in Japan the ranchers massage their cattle and feed them beer.  Zuckerberg is going one better, for he also gives them macadamia nuts.  The beer is brewed on his ranch and he has an orchard of Macadamia Nuts.

• Both Wagyu and Angus cattle.
• Said he's still not sure if the nuts will enhance the taste, but I'd like to try it.

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